It
was a question in an online Masterclass: was Susan making a free choice when
she ordered noodles instead of rice with her Chinese meal?
Most
of us would say at once, Of course. She could have ordered rice if she’d chosen to. Or not ordered rice or noodles and asked for chips that
were not even on the menu. Susan can do what she likes. Susan has free will.
Well,
has she? Science and thinking about it can suggest otherwise.
I answered first that she did not make a free choice. There were alternatives on
the menu, but Susan chose noodles because she wanted noodles, not rice.
Obviously. That left her, in effect, with no choice.
Then
I thought, it’s a question in a Masterclass. They must expect more thought than
the obvious. And so I thought some more.
Did
Susan choose noodles because she always
chooses noodles? Wouldn’t that suggest that she hasn’t got free will like I
said - that she’s just ‘programmed’ to choose noodles? Then I thought, on the
other hand, even if she’s programmed like that, she’s still free to break with
the programme. She could order something else, including rice, if she chooses
to. And so I changed my answer to she has
got free will.
But
now I examined my reasons more closely. I was seeing this little Masterclass
problem in terms of Susan’s choice, which of course begs the
question - meaning the question itself assumes she has a choice. (We all assume
that, don’t we?) But what if we don’t have a choice? So I changed again and
decided, finally, Susan did not make a free choice. What she wanted determined she
would choose noodles, at least on that occasion.
Which means my first, instinctive answer was the right answer, though it didn't explain why. In this way.
The
choice and the action are not always two ‘events’ - that is, first we decide to have
noodles as opposed to rice and then we order noodles. The two can be one and the
same thing. This idea can be confusing at first, contrary to common sense, but
becomes clearer with another example.
I
choose to raise my left arm .. and it’s raised. I choose not to raise my left
arm .. and so it’s not raised. We believe we’re making a choice between two
options when our action must plainly be one. Your arm is raised because you’ve chosen
to raise it; or it stays put because you’ve chosen not to raise it. The action does
not involve any choice: the action is the choice.
Now
that still seems strange, even wrong, until we see there's a quite simple
explanation for all this.
Susan
could have chosen rice, looking back, because free choice and free will are
what we always have when we’re looking back
or forward, not faculties we necessarily exercise at the time. Occasionally we glimpse and confirm this. We say about something we've done, I felt I had no choice. Is freedom only what we believe we have, not a reality?
